Brian Johnson's Sales Evolution

A story about how Brian Johnson, founder of Braintree, got his start in door-to-door sales before founding his successful companies.

"Brian Johnson created Braintree, which was basically Stripe before Stripe - an online payments company. They sold to PayPal for about $800 million, and he owned a huge chunk of it. They also bought Venmo along the way.

Before starting Braintree, his previous startup had failed or was failing, and he needed money fast. He got a sales job with a financial products company selling to businesses. He decided to figure out how to become the best sales rep, so he started doing door-to-door sales. He had a very clever technique (though not specified in the transcript) that enabled him to become the top salesman in North America.

He said door-to-door sales was a really formative experience because you need an incredible amount of determination. You're going to get rejected all the time, and you need to learn how to get your foot in the door, get somebody's attention, get them interested, and close them.

After selling Braintree, he wanted to have a huge nest egg to reinvest in a world-changing idea. He's put in $54 million of his own money, plus raised another $53 million from outside investors for his new venture [Kernel]."